


Stone Heart

by Benga



Category: The Dresden Files - All Media Types, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Friendship fix-it because Harry and Butters really ought to talk about what happened in Skin Game, Gen, come on guys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-04-05 13:59:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4182531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benga/pseuds/Benga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When children start disappearing in a rural Montana town, Harry and the newly Knighted Butters set out to find the culprit and bring the kids home. But the area is home to more unrest than they expected, and it seems that time is running out for more than just the missing children- when Sidhe Court politics turn violent, no one is safe...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I don't own any of these characters or anything related to the Dresden Files, and this is just for fun! 
> 
> This is also more or less the second piece of fiction I have written....ever? Which of course means that I accidentally outlined a ~45k word novel because apparently I am incapable of doing anything small. Ah, me, why do you do this to me.

You know those days when nothing goes right? When one thing after another happens and you’d gladly pay every cent you own to be done with it all, but the train wreck of your life just _keeps going_?

It was one of those days.

I slammed the car door behind me as I stepped out onto my driveway, shoes squelching uncomfortably. I was wearing three layers, which would have been sufficient for the mid-March chill were I not also wearing a few gallons of lake water and what felt like half the mud in the state of Illinois. The stench of rotting fish and motor oil would come off me easily enough (I desperately hoped), but I had the feeling that my car would keep the pleasant aromas native to Chicago’s beautiful waterways for years to come.

“Fantastic,” I said sourly, shivering. “Just perfect.”

I didn’t even consider the front door, but instead trudged my way around the house to the hose-equipped back porch. I had gotten a call from Will at five in the morning, asking if perhaps I was free to come help out with a “minor problem” that “wouldn’t take more than a few minutes.” Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s my own fault that warning bells didn’t go off at that innocent request. I don’t care if the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and your own dear mother promise otherwise; any problem warranting a five AM call is going to be a pain in the ass.

The problem in question had been some young punk who’d gotten his hands on a genuine guidebook to some fairly advanced Tibetan meditation techniques. Were I not currently more inclined to beat him over the head with said book until either it or his skull gained an interesting new shape incompatible with future troublemaking, I would be very impressed that he’d actually managed to do anything at all with it.

What he’d done was summon a tulpa.

See, most summonings draw a demon or spirit or other magical being from the Nevernever into our world using the caster’s will as a conduit. Once called, the creature’s physical form is made of ectoplasm, held together by the mage’s energy- the result of a purely magical being suddenly existing in a rather more mundane world. If the connection is cut, the physical form melts back into goop in short order.

Tulpas, on the other hand, are not supernatural beings who’ve been drawn here from another plane. They come from within the caster themself- a thought that’s been given shape and form and, if the person was particularly stupid or unlucky, a mind of its own. Think imaginary friends, only less like Harvey and more like the Shining.

Since tulpas don’t have the option of being formed from ectoplasm, they make physical bodies from whatever materials are lying around. This morning’s idiot had performed the ritual on the shores of Lake Michigan, presumably because he thought that sunrise on the lake would be helpful or cleansing or something. The ritual worked, so hey, maybe it was. What this meant for the Alphas and me was that instead of having to deal with a homicidal thought-horror, we had to deal with a homicidal thought-horror made of the highest quality filth and garbage available in the commercial shipping terminal.

Will had protested his innocence in the whole affair, insisting that the kid was under eighteen and so this _was_ a minor problem and no deception had been made on his part. I acknowledged the technical truth of his statement, and offered a reasonable counter-argument by way of throwing him in the lake.

He swore vengeance for my treachery. I interrupted him, saying that it was still my turn for vengeance, being the guy who’d been dragged out of bed under false pretenses. The rest of the werewolves watched us with varying levels of interest.

Will denied my claim, saying I had used up my payback quota and now it was his turn. I argued that since he’d been drenched in foul liquid by the tulpa, my throwing him in the lake was actually a good thing and did not satisfy my need for revenge. He maintained that it was the intent that counted, not the outcome, and if I was unsatisfied with my revenge then maybe I should have thought it out more beforehand. I reluctantly yielded to his logic. Will high-fived a bemused (or maybe just amused) Georgia and went back to enthusiastically swearing to bring about my downfall. Andi said we were both idiots.

I smiled, remembering the laugh hiding in Andi’s voice as Will struck increasingly ridiculous and dramatic poses. The past several years had been rough, and every member of the Alphas who’d stuck around and joined the Chicago Alliance after my death had seen far more than their fair share of death and violence. Disgusting monster aside, this morning had been a good one. None of us had been hurt past the normal bumps and bruises of a brawl, and we’d taken down the tulpa without harming the kid. Poor guy was way more freaked out by the fifteen foot tall sludgefiend than any of us had been. Will would be passing him along to a local chapter of the Paranet to get him set up with protection and an education.

All in all, a fine outcome.

I reminded myself of this repeatedly while trying to wash the worst of the muck off my clothing and gear, having long ago lost all feeling in my toes.

The sound of running feet on hardwood floor announced the arrival of my daughter on the other side of the door. She didn’t open it, though- we had strict rules about letting people into the house, and she followed them closely. She certainly didn’t get that trait from me. I felt a pang of sadness. When Maggie got serious, her face reminded me of Susan so very badly. These days, though, that reminder came with more love and affection than grief.

“I hope that wasn’t the sound of running in socks, o daughter mine,” I called through the door.

“Nope!”

I heard her plop down on the floor, presumably to take off socks. Little stinker. Grinning, I turned off the hose and began to put it away.

“Could you or Mouse bring a couple towels to the door?”

“Okay!” Thump thump thump thump. At least she wasn’t wearing socks anymore. I heard her hollering as she ran upstairs, “Mouse! Get some towels, okay? Dad’s home and he fought a somethin’ and he got dirty again and he had to use the hose and now he’s all wet and- !”

I closed my eyes, listening to the sound of my kid running around my house, yelling something muffled and unintelligible. In a great many ways, my life was more complicated than it had ever been. And yet- my house. My kid. I wouldn’t trade this for anything. A moment later, the pitter patter of little feet thundered back downstairs, accompanied by the clicking of Mouse’s nails.

Taking down the wards and unlocking the door, I said, “No hugs until after I shower, pumpkin, got it? I don’t want you getting all messy, too.”

Opening the door, I was greeted by the sight of Maggie jumping up and down in place with excitement, one hand on Mouse’s back for balance. Immediately, she stopped bouncing and wrinkled up her nose.

“Ew, you smell like bad car oil.”

“And dead fish,” I agreed. “Towel?”

She took an old, ratty towel from Mouse’s mouth and tossed it over to me. It was one of the towels we used for dog baths, but from the look on Mouse’s face he probably wasn’t going to want it back when I was done with it. Having done his duty, he snorted at me in disapproval and walked away towards the living room.

I dried off as much as I could, leaving my shoes and outer layers in a hamper by the door. “I’ll be done in a minute,” I said, entering the bathroom and trying not to drip on everything. “Have you had breakfast yet?”

“Nope, Mouse ‘n me just got up.” Outside the bathroom it sounded like she’d wandered away, following the furry lummox. “Oh,” she shouted, “Molly left a message on the crazy old answering machine, she wanted to talk magic business with you.”

“Did she say if it was an emergency?” I said, sticking my head out of the bathroom.

“Ummmmmm…”

I could perfectly visualize the way her face screwed up in concentration when she was trying to remember things.

“She said…um, that she needed to speak with you, and she’d meet you at Aunt Charity and Uncle Michael’s house, and it was business and not personal, and, uh, and I think that was it. I think the machine broke, too. But I didn’t do it.”

“Thanks for taking the message, Mags. What do you want for breakfast? Waffles, pancakes, or eggs and toast?”

I heard the sofa squeaking from her excited squirming. “Waffles! Waffles, definitely. Yes.”

 

Afterward a quick shower, I headed to the kitchen and committed breakfast.

In all fairness, my cooking skills have vastly improved since I began cooking for other people. This certainly wasn’t the first time I’d lived with another person, but back when Thomas and I were roommates I’d had zero qualms about throwing a bag of frozen veggies at his face when he complained that he was hungry. Now, I actually _wanted_ to make good food for Maggie and, on occasion, Karrin.

After an initial heavy reliance on Pilsbury and Eggos, I did manage to develop the ability to make a variety of passingly good breakfast foods. While I prepared the waffle iron and the batter, Maggie sat at the kitchen table, swinging her legs and telling me about school and friends and books and did I know that there are worms in acorns sometimes? I gladly let her rambling, one-sided conversation wash over me, injecting an affirmative or interrogative word as necessary.

Once the waffles were done we switched roles, and I recounted a slightly edited version of my morning while she devoured her breakfast. When I got to the part where the tulpa exploded and showered everyone present in ooze, she burst out laughing.

“Hey, now,” I said in mock indignation, “that is not funny, young lady! I’ll have you know that I was nearly hit in the head with a rubber boot! I’m probably going to have to burn those clothes I was wearing.”

“You still sort of smell like the harbor, Dad,” she said, giggling. “Sorry.”

“Oh, little do you know,” I said. “You think I smell like the harbor? You haven’t smelled the car.”

She gasped with dismay.

“Sorry, kiddo,” I said. I tried to keep a straight face and not smile at the exaggerated look of horror on her face. “I’ll do my best to clean it out, but I think our ride is probably doomed to smell a bit fishy for the rest of eternity.”

“How early do you think I’d have to get up to walk to Uncle Michael’s house to catch the school bus there?” she asked.

“Easy on,” I laughed, “let’s not jump to such extreme measures right off the bat. We’ll see what I can do. For today, though, it’s gonna be pretty stinky and there’s no way around that. Go grab your homework and anything you’ll want if you spend the night with the Carpenters.”

“Why do I have to ride over, too?” she asked, pouting. “I can stay home with Mouse, I don’t need a babysitter.”

I side-stepped that particular claim and instead patiently said, “I’m going over for a business talk. Business means I might need to leave town for a day or more. Leaving town for a day or more means you might need, oh, food, company, access to a bus stop on Monday-”

“Okay, okay!” she huffed, “I’ll go get my stuff.”

As she left the kitchen, I said, “Hey. Maggie bear. I didn’t get a chance to hug you. Fish hug?”

She pulled a face and said, “Gross,” but ran back into the kitchen and gave me a hug.

“Good morning,” I said, kissing the top of her head.

She let go, rolling her eyes and smiling, and went to gather what she needed.

 

The early morning air was still and quiet when we arrived at the Carpenter house. I watched Maggie make steam clouds with her breath and pretend to be a dragon as we waited for Mouse to unhappily extricate himself from the back seat of the car. However badly the car might have smelled to the two of us with our cold-deadened noses, the poor dog must have had it quite a lot worse.

 Charity was waiting by the door as we walked up the steps to the house.  

“I didn’t expect to see you two here today! Has something come up, Harry?”

“Oh, has Molly not arrived yet? She called to meet me here,” I said, pausing in the entry hall.

Charity glanced at Maggie, and then smiled at me. “It’s no trouble. Maggie, darling, why don’t you go ahead and wake up Hank and the girls? The lazybones are still in bed and ought to be up like you.”

“Okay!” Maggie chirped. She conscientiously took off her boots before bolting up the stairs to the kids’ bedrooms, Mouse bounding after her.

“Hey, no running in socks!” I shouted after her. “Stars and stones, that child. I don’t think she’s ever walked when she could get away with running.”

Charity raised her eyebrow, giving me an even look. “Yes, Mr. Dresden. We’re all terribly confused as to where she might have gotten that sort of attitude.” A look of consternation suddenly passed her face. “What smells like dead fish?”

“Haven’t the foggiest,” I said. “What about Molly?”

“Oh. Well, I don’t know what she told you, but she’s already come and gone this morning,” Charity said. “She arrived right after Michael and I woke up, joined us for breakfast, and then left. She never said anything about meeting with you.”

I had a bad feeling about this.

“She did leave behind a folder,” Charity added. “I had assumed she forgot it, but – perhaps she left it for you?” Her voiced had gained a worried edge. Molly had yet to tell her parents about her new job as Faerie Queen, or about its associated effects. Like how she may not be human anymore. I had kept her secret, judging it to be Molly’s life and thus, her decision, but her parents were intelligent and close to her. I’d be astonished if they hadn’t noticed some changes in Molly’s behavior or personality. Then again, I still entirely unsure of what – if any – specific changes the Queen’s Mantle was having on her, so maybe they hadn’t.

“Ah, that must be it,” I said, hiding my unease. “I didn’t actually get Molly’s message this morning. I was out at the harbor, and Maggie relayed the message when I got back. Some wires must have gotten crossed, that’s all.”

“That explains that,” Charity said with a smile. “You wouldn’t believe some of the messages my kids have taken down for me. Let me go grab that folder for you.”

As I waited for Charity to come back, I ran through some options. I highly doubted that Maggie had gotten the message wrong; she was bright, the message seemed simple, and Mouse would have indicated if she had mixed it up. It’s possible the message was left by someone other than Molly, in which case trouble was brewing in a big way. No one would leave a false message on the Winter Knight’s line pretending to be his Lady just for laughs. Actually, some things would, but they tended to be dangerously psychotic and that wouldn’t really improve the outlook of the situation.

A third scenario was that Molly had indeed asked me to meet her here with no intention of doing so. I found this possibility to be the most worrisome. We had both been busy recently, and I hadn’t managed to get a feel for how she was handling the mantle. In and of itself, this was troubling. I’m pretty good at reading people, particularly those I know well, but my old apprentice’s evasive techniques were burgeoning impressively. I didn’t want to think that she was succumbing to the pressures of the mantle and becoming Sidhe, but if this was her go-to way of asking me to do something…

I massaged the bridge of my nose. I would need to see what was in the folder before going any further down this rabbit-hole.

“Here we go,” Charity said, walking back out to the front hall with a large, brown envelope, the kind used to deliver packets of papers.

I took it from her and popped open the brads. From a cursory glance, the envelope contained newspaper clippings, missing persons reports, crime scene photographs, and a single sheet of white paper. I pulled it out. It was blank but for four names, each with a street address. Underneath that were the words ‘Carbonado, MT.’

Oh yeah. I was really not liking this.

“Trouble?” Charity asked.

“Looks like,” I said, sighing. “I’m sorry for the short notice-”

“You don’t need to apologize, Harry,” she replied. “I know a little something about jobs with difficult work schedules. To be honest, I asked Matthew to put the sheets on the guest bed when I saw you pull up at the house.”

“Really?” I asked, blinking.

“Harry,” she said, “honestly. It’s eight o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, you show up unannounced, and Maggie has her overnight bag. Yes, I guessed that she might be staying.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” I said.

I walked to the foot of the stairs and called for Maggie to come down.

“I’ve got some business out of town, Mags,” I said as she came down the steps. “You brought everything you need for a sleepover, yes?”

“Will you be back tomorrow?”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said.

“Promise?” she asked quietly.

Ow. Although she’d been living with me for almost a year, Maggie was unsurprisingly insecure about the people in her life being there the next day – me, in particular. Given how long it took to commit myself to fatherhood, I guess I deserved that. Still, I had been hesitant to make promises about when or even if I’d be coming home when I left for a job. I wanted her to feel safe and secure, but my line of work was dangerous.  No matter how many precautions I took, I couldn’t guarantee my own safety.

“I will do everything within my power to come home fast, Maggie,” I said.

She thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

“Okay.”

“Be good,” I said, kneeling down to hug her. “Listen to Aunt Charity and Uncle Michael. Do your schoolwork. No plotting the violent overthrow of the government.”

She gave me a look.

“One day you’re handing out pamphlets in the street. Next thing you know, you’re heading a fascist regime,” I said, shaking my head. “It happens so fast.”

“Dad,” she said, drawing out the word in exasperation. “That’s silly.”

I grinned and tousled her hair. “Go have fun with the Jawas, kiddo. Scram.”

“’Kay, Dad,” she said, giving me another quick hug around the neck before running back up the stairs. “Bye!”

I rose to my feet and turned to leave.

“Thanks again, Charity,” I said, “I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to see Michael before I left, but tell him I said hi.”

“Of course,” she said. “May God go with you.”

“With any luck, He’ll have more important things on his mind,” I said, “and this job will be no big deal.”

As I reached for the handle, the door suddenly flew open into my face. I reeled backwards, clutching my nose and reflexively drawing in power. The door was cautiously opened a second time to reveal Waldo Butters, who stood with one hand covering his own face and a duffle bag at his feet.

“Ow,” he said, voice muffled by his hand. “Hi, Harry.” His eyes traveled from my face down to the envelope in my hands, and then past me to Charity. He lowered his hand, expression uncertain. “Were you heading somewhere? My car broke down, and, uh…”

“Oh, come on,” I said, throwing my hands in the air.

“I’m new at this,” Butters said, “but by any chance, is this the part where you say you needed a Knight?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments/kudos are greatly appreciated :D
> 
> I'm currently applying to medical school, taking classes, and working, so I probably won't be updating this fic every week- but I'll try! 
> 
> (tbh I'm posting this hoping for some outside motivation to write faster)


	2. Chapter 2

“I just had to say it,” I said, glaring upwards. “Hell’s bells.”

“Do you and the ceiling need a moment?” Butters asked, still rubbing his nose. “Because I can wait out here, if you do.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Waldo,” Charity said, pulling me out of the doorway.

“Thank you,” he said, picking up his bag and coming inside sans invitation. For good reason, inviting visitors inside as a matter of courtesy had been heavily discouraged over the past few years. “I assume you have a reason as to why my car spontaneously got a flat tire as I drove past the neighborhood. What’s up?”

“For the love of…ugh. Fine,” I said, resisting the urge to rub my temples. Apparently, Someone had decided that this warranted the attention of a Knight. My day was looking better every minute. “Alright. In a nutshell, it looks like there’s been a spate of missing children in the thriving metropolis of Podunk, Montana. Past that, situation unclear. I just got the info myself,” I said, gesturing with the folder.

“May I?”

“Be my guest,” I said, handing it over.

He flipped through it, lips pursed in thought.

“O-kay,” he said slowly. “Montana. Were you planning on driving?”

“Driving,” I scoffed. “You jest, Waldo. What do you take me for, some vanilla plebe? Nah, I think there’s a Way out from Chicago that’ll take me to the right vicinity in about an hour. It’ll cut down the trip by, oh, twenty hours or so.”

“Now you’re thinking with portals,” he said absently, still leafing through the contents. I narrowed my eyes at him. There was a reference in there, I just knew it. He dug around in his pocket, looking for something. “Mind if I make a call before we leave? I mean, if… uh. I sort of assumed –” His face reddened slightly. “Would you mind if I came with you?”

Butters had been training in every moment of his spare time since he became bearer of the sword Fidelacchius, practicing both with the Carpenters and with Murph’s old sparring partner, one of Marcone’s Einherjar warriors. Svaldi Something-or-other. Or Skaldi. Or Svenson. Whatever. Sadly, no amount of exercise was ever going to change the general bent of Butter’s physical stature, which could most generously be termed wiry and vertically challenged. That being said, the man had a solid head on his shoulders, and I trusted his judgment of his own abilities damn near implicitly. He wouldn’t be volunteering to come if he didn’t think he was prepared.

“What the heck. It feels rude to say no, considering the trouble someone went to in arranging these inexplicable coincidences,” I said. “Besides, far be it from me to turn down the assistance of a Knight.”

Butters practically glowed with pride.

“Do you have everything you need for some work?” I asked. “I’d like to get moving soonest.”

“Sure, sure,” he said, waving me away. “Michael gave me some tips on the job; I’ve had a go-bag ready and with me since day one. I’ve just gotta make a call, but I’ll be right back.”

He trotted out of the entry hall, heading back towards the study. Huh. Probably calling Andi to let her know he was heading out of town. How responsible of him. I took a seat and began a more detailed reading of the materials Molly had left for me.

Only a few minutes had passed before Butters walked back out into the hall.

“All set?” I asked.

He nodded.

His manner was quieter than when he arrived, more focused. As far as I knew, this was going to be his first official work as a Knight – unless you counted his defense of the Carpenter house against the forces of evil last year, or that time he attacked a Denarian with his bare hands to save my life amidst a zombie apocalypse. You know. Little stuff like that. There was a difference, though, between an act of bravery in the heat of the moment and choosing to walk into the line of fire, knowing full well what it might cost you. The memory of Michael’s body hanging limp and blood-soaked rose unbidden in my mind. He had survived, but most others who held his job were not so lucky. The majority of Knights only held the title for a single day, or a single job.

Nothing about this job seemed right so far – the call, the folder, Molly’s strange behavior – and I doubted this situation was going anywhere other than to hell in handbasket. I was nowhere near comfortable with this being the first time Sir Waldo took the field.

“Harry? Earth to Harry,” Butters said. “You got some kind of internal monologue going on in there or something?”

“Pffft,” I said. “What kind of person does that?” I tried to put aside my misgivings. He knew the risks, and we’d both be best served by me keeping my head in the game. “Come on, let’s get moving.”

“After you, wise one,” he said, grinning.

“Damn straight,” I said, and he followed me out of the house and into the cold.

 

 

I gave Butters directions to the opening of our Way as I sat in the passenger seat, thinking about the scant information that the folder had provided.

In the past month, four kids had disappeared from their homes in Carbonado, a speck of a town nestled in the mountains of southern Montana. The first had gone missing about a month ago – Trevor Samson, maybe six or seven, with a wide smile and a missing front tooth. His disappearance had been followed two weeks later by that of Kari Sinclair, and then Anan Ihejirika a week after that.

A group of campers on a night hike had found Trevor’s body on one of the mountain trails two days ago, ravaged by the elements and scavengers. The fourth child, Alana Tomos, was found missing the following morning.

Local law enforcement hadn’t been able to turn up anything solid. Two parents worked at the lumberyard; two kids were in the same afterschool program. They lived in different neighborhoods, attended different schools – honestly, considering the size of Carbonado, it was more of a surprise that the four families didn’t seem to have any universally shared social circles.

The one commonality was the manner of the disappearances. The families woke up in the morning to find that their doors were locked, their alarm systems were on, and their child’s bed was empty. Nothing else in the house was disturbed. Hell, the Ihejirika family even had two sons sleeping in the same room. The older brother swore that when he went to sleep, Anan was in bed next to him. He never woke up, never heard or saw a thing, but he was alone the next morning.

I almost wished the folder hadn’t included photographs of the kids. I couldn’t stop myself from remembering when Maggie had been missing her front teeth, or from recognizing her in Alana’s dark hair and Anan’s shining eyes. The thought of waking up to find her gone made my stomach turn painfully. She went missing once, and I can’t say I handled it that well. At all. And that right there is a stunningly good bid for the understatement of the century.

I’d been willing to go to frighteningly extreme lengths, and that was before I’d even met her. What would I do if something happened to her now?

“You got kinda quiet over there,” Butters said. “You okay?”

“No. No, I don’t think so,” I said, taking a deep breath. “They’re so young, Waldo. They’re just children.”

“We’ll find them,” Butters said. “We’ll bring them back.”

“And then we’ll kill whatever sick son of a bitch thinks it has the right to do this,” I said. My voice came out harsher than I’d intended.

Butters drove in silence for a moment.

“And then,” he said, “we will stop this from happening again.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Bullshit, it is.”

I turned in my seat to look at him, raising my eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“If you’d like,” he said, unperturbed. “Look, Harry, you’re upset. You’re not the only one. Trust me on this, I don’t like what’s happening any more than you do. This is going to stop. But hurt kids don’t equal a free pass for you to go all Rambo-Terminator. You know you can’t afford that.”

He ignored my look and kept his eyes on the road, and after a while I turned back in my seat.

“Looks like you got a hang of the holier-than-thou schtick pretty fast.”   

“Nah, man,” Butter said cheerfully, “I’m Jewish. We’re more about the constant looming guilt than the self-righteous one-upping.”

I didn’t respond, and Butters didn’t attempt to restart the conversation. Outside, the fallen snow dampened the sound of the city, and the crunch of my car’s tires on snow was enough to drown out the soft sounds of the other vehicles we passed.

I exhaled slowly. Damn it. He was right. Self-control has never been my defining trait, and the Winter Knight’s power came with a disturbingly hedonistic streak of sadism. Once the mantle got momentum, it was hard to keep myself from doing things I would otherwise find abhorrent. If I actually agreed with it on a properly nasty fate for anything that murdered children, I’m not sure that I could make myself stop.

_Well, Harry, you did this to yourself. And for what reason? Oh, yes, because someone stole your little girl…_

Gosh.

Good thing that kind of issue wasn’t going to come up during this case.

Our conversation for the rest of the drive was limited to the occasional direction as we got further off the main roads. Our Way was situated in a dank underpass near the old Union Stockyards. Even though the meatpacking district had been largely shut down for decades, a faint, unpleasant pall lingered on the edge of my senses – nothing too overwhelming, but I had no desire to open my Sight here. Thousands of lives had ended on these few acres of land over the past century, and they hadn’t all been hogs and cows. The place gave me the creeps.

I directed Butters to pull over as we approached the mouth of the underpass. It wasn’t exactly the best part of town to leave your car, especially when I didn’t know when we’d be returning, but one of the upsides of driving a complete junker is not having to worry so much about people stealing your car.

“The lake funk probably isn’t a bad deterrent, either,” I said to myself.

Pulling his bag out of the car, Butters gave me a funny look. “What?”

“Nothing.”

 

The inside of the underpass was a few degrees colder than the street outside, despite being shielded from the wind. Its walls were covered in layers of faded graffiti, the first and only indications of human activity I’d seen in the area. The whole place felt uncomfortably lifeless.

“Spooky,” Butters commented. His voice echoed strangely. “This is our stop?”

“Yes,” I said, distracted. I knew that the first opening we needed was under this road, and all it would take would be a simple check with my pendant to find it. I was beginning to develop something of an intuition for opening passages, though – nothing like the mastery my mother had achieved, mind you, but enough that I was more confident in predicting simple A-to-B portals. I got the feeling it would be quite a while before I got skilled enough to find multi-step Ways on the fly.

Butters watched me slowly walk down the length of the tunnel, my hand gently trailing across the surface of the wall. I could tell he wanted to say something, or ask a question, but he didn’t interrupt my concentration.

The hairs on my arm suddenly rose, as if a finger had been trailed from the back of my hand to the crook of my arm. I shivered, and stopped walking. Frowning at the wall, I reached up to touch my pentacle. An image of the wall written in swirling, shifting lines leapt into my mind, almost overlaying my actual vision. I was still a few feet short of my target.

“Here we are,” I said, walking forward to stand before a section of the wall which seemed or less like the rest but for the slight chill in the air.

 “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Butters said, walking up behind me, “but there’s typically some degree of resonance between two sides of a portal, right? Like, happy place to happy place, spooky place to spooky place?”

“Eh, it’s more complicated than that, but close enough.”

“Oh. Good.” Butters squinted at what appeared to be a grime-caked drawing of a hung man a few feet down the tunnel from us. “Just checking.”

“Do you have any sources of light on you?” I asked.

Butters nodded. “Flashlight, back-up flashlight, handful of glowsticks, my watch –”

I grinned. “Great. Lose ‘em.”

He blinked. “Um. Okay?”

“Pack them away. Anything that might flash, blink, beep, or otherwise do anything to attract attention. This Way goes through a cave of some kind, and the other side is going to be pitch black. We’ll be coming out about a foot or so above the ground, so don’t stumble. Don’t make any noise. It should take about a minute and a half to get to our exit.” I waited for Butters to finish rearranging his rucksack before taking his hand and placing it on my arm. “It’s about to get dark.”

I raised a spherical shield, its boundaries making a seamless fit with the material below and around the two of us. We stood close enough to the side of the tunnel for the sphere to include a broad strip of the wall in front of us.

Given the original design and most frequent use of my shields, they were generally tuned to deflecting kinetic energy. Ever since that incident with the napalm, however, I’d made sure they could handle other forms of energy, too. After a moment of concentration, we were plunged into complete darkness as the shield’s frequency shifted from deflecting kinetic to electromagnetic energy- specifically, that electromagnetic energy which formed visible light. Take that, high school physics.

“Alright. Keep close and keep quiet. Got any questions?”

His voice came from somewhere near my elbow. “Only one. Whose attention are we trying to avoid, again?”

“No clue,” I said. “Next question?”

“Do you not know because no one’s ever checked, or…?”

“If anyone has, then as far as I know they’ve never come back,” I said cheerfully. “Next question?”

“No, no,” Butters said, “I think that’s just about all the answers I can take, thanks. I’m glad to be traveling with such a knowledgeable guide.”

“Glad to be of service. Now be quiet. _Aparatum_.”

I felt a tear opening on the wall before us, beginning around my eye level and slowly creeping downward. Without the darkened shield around us and the portal, even the dim light of the tunnel would have instantly given away our arrival. I waited until I felt the opening reach the floor before carefully stepping forward into the Nevernever.

The floor of the cave was about a foot and a half below the floor of the tunnel, and for a brief moment as I lowered my foot I feared that my information had been flawed, and that we were in fact far higher than I had thought. It only took my foot a second longer than expected to hit the ground, but it was long enough for my imagination to treat me to a lovely image of myself blindly stepping out into empty air and falling to a grisly death.

I turned to helped Butters down through the portal, and willed it to close behind him. Only after I felt it flicker out of existence did I lower the shield. It didn’t make a bit of difference in the view, of course, but at least the shield was no longer draining my energy.

I began to walk in careful, measured steps which were rendered silent by some sort of sphagnum mat which coated the ground. Within a few seconds a faint static of white pinpoints and abstract shapes started to float in my vision in response to the total lack of light, and I could hear my own blood pumping through my ears for lack of other sounds to hear. About a dozen steps into the cave, I heard Butter’s pants leg brush up against something in a quiet rasp of cloth on stone. The sound, as quiet as it must have actually been, seemed shockingly loud. His hand tightened sharply on my arm in surprise or apology, but I continued counting out my steps without pause. Only a few steps passed before it happened again. This time, Butters’ hand squeezed my arm so tightly it hurt. My own heart rate had jumped up a notch or ten, but even as I scowled in Butters’ general direction, alarms started going off in my head. I didn’t change my pace, but I began to Listen carefully.

At first, it only compounded what I could already hear – my heartbeat, now distractingly loud to my heightened hearing – but other sounds slowly started to come through. Butters’ own racing pulse; his breathing, quiet and careful; the almost imperceptibly soft sound of the mossy ground against our shoes. Then it happened again, the sound of heavy cloth on stone, and two things became immediately clear.

One, it did not sound quite so much like cloth as it did leather, or scaly hide.

Two, the sound was not coming from Butters, but from something walking less than a foot behind him.

Oh, crap.

I resisted the urge to move faster. For one thing, any unexpected change in my movement would likely make Butters stumble, which would be bad for all kinds of reasons. For another, whatever was behind him had been there long enough to have passed up the opportunity to attack with the element of surprise. Maybe it thought we were still ignorant of its presence, or maybe it thought we knew about it and were simply confident enough not to care. Either way, suddenly reacting with fear would not lead to a happy outcome.

I couldn’t bring up a shield around us; whatever was behind us was too close, and I didn’t know where Butters ended and it began. I didn’t want to risk putting up a shield that would lock us in with it, for however short a time. It takes far less than a second to get real dead, and Butters would be the one taking the hit.

We were less than twenty paces away from our Way out, and I decided that we really didn’t need to stick around for the time it’d take to make a stealthy exit. I heard the rustling sound again, only this time sounded like it came from multiple places behind us. Either there were more of them were showing up, or the thing was significantly larger than I’d thought. I heard what sounded like a faint whisper, coming from behind and above us.

Fifteen paces.

The whisper grew in volume, though even Listening I still couldn’t distinguish any words. I could feel Butters shaking through his iron grip on my arm.

Ten paces.

Something giggled, high and childlike.

Five paces.

The whispering stopped, and then a soft, young voice said, “Give me your hand, and I’ll lead you home!”

“Oh, fuck that,” I said loudly. I turned sharply to the right, pulling Butters forward by his grip on my left arm, and briefly I felt something else try to pull him back. In the same motion I stuck my right arm out behind me, shouting, “Forzare!”

I felt the force pass through what seemed like a maze of thin trees – which made no sense, we’d just walked across empty ground – before hitting something enormous. It screeched, the sound echoing and redoubling, and I screamed. In, like, a manly way, though. I think Butters did, too, but the cave had gone from silent to so thunderously loud that I only knew I was screaming by the strain in my throat.

“Sword! Butters, the Sword!” I shouted, pulling him along with me for the last few feet. I didn’t know if he could hear me or not. “Aparatum!”

The cave behind me flashed into brilliant light, blinding me. Everything was too loud, too bright, too much. A spike of panic pierced through the chaos. What if I’d opened the door in the wrong place? What if I had miscounted my steps? Hell, I’d run the last bit, what if I’d gone too far, or not far enough? What if I’d gotten turned around?

The ground beneath my feet heaved, almost throwing me down, and I screamed again in fear and frustration as I grabbed Butters by the back of his coat and blindly flung us both through the portal.

 


	3. Chapter 3

I pulled Butters tightly against me as we fell through the opening and prayed that we weren’t about to fall into the middle of the ocean or off a cliff, or somewhere similarly deadly, like the middle of an interstate highway. We hit the ground hard only a moment later and rolled across an uneven surface, stopping only when my back slammed up against a wall. The sounds coming from the cave rose in pitch and volume as the creature began to follow us through. I tried to draw in a breath to seal the opening, but the combined impacts of the ground and the wall had knocked the wind out of me and I couldn’t remember how to breathe.

Butters gave a strangled yell, and a painfully bright shape moved through my blurred vision as he blindly swung his sword, keeping the furious monstrosity back. I shook my head, trying to get my mind unscrambled.

“Move, Butters!” I wheezed. “ _Claudo, claudo!_ ”

The stability of the portal wobbled briefly before collapsing entirely, cutting off the horrific noise.

For a few seconds neither of us spoke. My ears were still ringing loud enough to conceal the approach of a brass band, but my eyes finished adjusting quickly. We’d come out at the end of an unlit hallway, the linoleum floor ripped up to reveal the cracked, jagged cement beneath it. Butters was bent forward with his hands on his knees, the now bladeless handle of his sword clenched in his right hand.

“Hey,” I said, though it came out as more of a choked gasp. The mantle could ignore pain all it wanted, but that wouldn’t help me get my breath back any faster. My diaphragm was still getting its act together.

I tried again. “Hey, man. You okay?”

Butters nodded shakily before looking up at me. “Yeah.” He was breathing heavily, but it seemed more like the effect of adrenaline than fear or exertion. “Yeah, I’m good.”

The shoulder of his shirt was shredded and bloody. I winced.

“Scale from one to ten,” I asked, “exactly how sure are you of that?”

He looked confused, and I pointed at his shoulder.

“Ah. Wow.” He blinked at it surprise. “I think I’m going to feel that pretty soon.”

I pushed myself up and went over to him, peeling back his collar for a better view. “Heh. Who’s always on my case about not noticing injuries, again?”

Butters hissed in discomfort at my probing fingers. “Totally different. This is, like –” He glanced down at his shoulder. “Four lacerations? Ow. Okay, yeah, that’s unpleasant.” They were shallow, maybe not even deep enough to need stitches. If I’d been a second slower in pulling him forward, though, he would’ve been dragged out of my hands entirely and into the dark. My thoughts flickered to the black basement of the Velvet Room, to clawed hands pulling me to the ground, and my fingers stuttered to a stop.

“You- ow- on the other hand,” Butters continued indignantly, not noticing my pause, “you call me over to your house for, for, broken bones and concussions and dislocations, and gunshot wounds you didn’t realize you had?! This is minor, yet I am completely aware of my…”

He trailed away, looking over my shoulder at something on the ground, and I turned to see what had caught his attention.

An eerily thin, severed arm lay in the shadows several feet away from where we’d come through. It was covered in some kind of smooth, black-lacquered chitin up to the wrist, ending in an incongruously normal-looking, soft, light brown hand. The amputating cut had been cauterized. As we watched, it began to lose its shape, melting until all that was left was a sheen of rapidly evaporating ectoplasm- and the hand.

The fourth finger had a wedding band.

I turned back to Butters and raised an eyebrow. “‘Give me your hand?’”

“Yeah,” he said slowly, still staring. “That’s… disturbing. How do you feel about driving back to Chicago?”

I pulled him to his feet by his uninjured arm, and started down the hall. “What, are you telling me you don’t appreciate this magical form of travel?”

“I suppose that would depend on if you want an honest answer.”

The hallway ended in a heavy, locked door, which opened easily. After I broke the deadbolt and handle.

Butters gave me a disapproving look.

I shrugged innocently and pulled open the door, and we walked out into a hot and humid night. Dressed for the spring chill of Chicago, I was instantly drenched in sweat. The steep road outside was empty, the buildings lining it shuttered and dark.

“Huh. Did we get caught in some kind of time dilation thing, or did we just skip a dozen timezones?” Butters asked.  He squinted at the sign on the building we’d left. “What is that, Khmer? Thai?”

“We should be in Cambodia. We aren’t that far from the next Way,” I said, nodding up the hill, “and there’s a slight chance two white guys in winter clothes will stick out if anyone sees us around here. Come on.”

We walked in silence, Butters fiddling with a gauze pad and tape. I could feel his eyes on me, but when I glanced over he quickly went back to adjusting the dressing on his shoulder. After the third or fourth repetition of the “totally not looking at you” game, I lost patience.

“Yes?”

His head snapped back up, guilty. “What? Oh, nothing.”

I scowled. “If you have something to say, just say it.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. He watched me for another few seconds, and seemed to come to some kind of decision. “You didn’t just happen to know a Way to some miniscule town in the middle of nowhere, did you?”

I had a nagging feeling that wasn’t what he had wanted to say to me. I ignored it.

“Wizard,” I said, dramatically raising my arms into jazz hands.

His lips quirked up for a second, but he continued, “Bob’s told me about the Ways. There’s no way, ha, that this is an established path. No sane person would go through that cave more than once, and to my knowledge Carbonado isn’t exactly a hotbed of supernatural activity.”

“First of all, I think you’re making a big assumption that wizards are in any way sane.”

“Harry.”

“What?”

Butters made an exasperated noise. “So, how? I’m no expert, but there are reasons why everyone sticks to the main Ways, one of which is that they are the only Ways most people really know. We just hopped to the other side of the globe in under five minutes on the way to some town that, in all likelihood, no Council member has ever stepped foot in before. You’ve certainly never been there, or here, before. How do you know where we’re going?”

“Job perk,” I said, shrugging. My mother’s pendant and its store of knowledge was not common knowledge. While I didn’t like lying to Butters, I also didn’t see any way in which spreading around that information could do more help than harm.

Butters nodded slowly.

“That’s huge.”

“It sure beats flying economy,” I said as I took off my unnecessarily warm jacket.

“No, Harry,” he said. “You can go anywhere, at any time. That’s a lot of power.”

He didn’t say anything further, but he seemed a little troubled.

I debated shrugging his comment off, but decided to respond honestly. “I guess so, yeah. It’s certainly a lot more of an advantage when I’m working alone or with a small number of others. Any group too big and it starts to lose its edge.”

“Stealth and maneuverability,” he said. “I see. Good thing you’re so well known for your stealthy tendencies.”

“Haha,” I said wryly. “Honestly, though, I’m still getting used to using the lesser Ways.”

“I couldn’t tell at all,” he said, wincing as he stretched his shoulder. I flipped him off amiably, and started to jog up the hill.

It only took a few minutes to reach the top, and I realized (belatedly, and somewhat guiltily) that we’d been moving up it at a fast clip even for my long legs. Butters had kept up gamely and was less winded than I’d have expected, which was probably why I hadn’t noticed and slowed down. Still, when I signalled that we were approaching our stop and slowed our pace to a walk he groaned gratefully.

“Not enough cardio in your workout routine?” I asked, pretending to eye him critically.

He made a face at me and mirrored my rude gesture from before, catching his breath. “When we get back to Chicago. I’m getting you in the ring. With Skjeldson. Just swords, no magic. You ass.”

I snapped my fingers. “Skjeldson. That’s his name. And, ha, no, why would I agree to that? I might _lose_.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want to bruise your fragile ego,” Butters said.

“I’m a delicate and wilting flower, it’s true.”

I turned off the road and started into the woods beside it, Butters a step behind me. The next Way was situated about fifty feet off of the road, in the middle of a small ring of trees.

“Any surprises to expect this time around?” Butters asked.

“It’s the Nevernever, you should always expect surprises,” I said. “But I don’t know of any specific dangers in this region of Faerie, no. Other than, you know. It’s in Faerie.”

“Why didn’t we drive?” he asked the air plaintively. I opened my mouth, but he cut me off. “I know, I know. Children and time crunch and practicality. I know why we didn’t drive, I’m just complaining. You do it all the time, so don’t you dare try to take this from me.”

“Sure, whatever you say,” I said, patting him on the back. “I’ll be nice, since this is your first time and all.”

“Not cool,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “You know for a fact my first time was a zombie apocalypse and I ended up tied to an undead dinosaur.”

“Sounds kinky, but hey, if that’s what does it for you,” I said.

“You would know, Harry, you were the one tying me there.”

I laughed. “Anything for a friend, Butters.”

The Way was marked with a perfect circle carved deep into an evergreen, about twenty feet above the ground.

“Here we go,” I said. He nodded, one hand on his sword’s handle. “ _Aparatum._ ”

At first, it was difficult to tell that the portal had even opened. Aside from the warping, bending edge of the doorway, the other side appeared exactly the same as the forest around us.

“Huh,” Butters said quietly. He took a few steps to the side, looking back and forth between the trees inside the portal and those behind it. They were identical. “Now that’s unnerving in a new and exciting way.”

I went through first. The portal had worked, without question; even though the forest appeared to be an exact twin of its Cambodian counterpart, it was made of the pure, wild magic of the Nevernever. “Come on. We’re not far from the end, now.”

“Why would you say that?” Butters grumbled as he followed me into Faerie. “That sentence just drips foreboding, Harry, you should know better.”

True to my pendant’s information, it was about a ten minute walk, and at first the only apparent abnormality was how normal everything seemed to be. After a few minutes, though, Butters slowed and motioned for me to do the same.

“What?” I asked quietly, scanning the forest.

He shook his head, frowning. “I don’t know. I thought...” He tilted his head to one side, listening. “I thought I heard music?”

As the words left his mouth, the temperature abruptly plummeted and our breaths became plumes of ice vapor.

“What the hell?” Butters yelped, drawing his sword handle but not extending its blade.

I drew my magic to the ready, but nothing happened. We stood back to back, waiting. Still nothing. A few seconds passed, and the biting cold eased. Our breaths disappeared as the previous heat of the forest returned.

“Okay,” I said, “That was odd.” I stepped back away from Butters but kept my shield prepared. “Let’s keep-”

Just as suddenly as before, the temperature abruptly changed. This time it spiked to boiling, and I snapped a shield up around us to protect from the heat. We were both already sweating from the humidity of the forest and the thickness of our winter clothes, but the brief flash of hot air made it almost unbearable. “Let’s keep moving.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” Butters said. He dug a water bottle out of his pack and passed it to me.

I kept the shield in place as we walked, and the temperature continued to swing to extremes at seemingly random intervals. Happily, we didn’t have far to go, and it wasn’t long before we arrived at a small and unusual river.

“Woah.” Butters stopped walking when he saw it. “That’s.... interesting. Is it dangerous?”

The narrow stream of water flowed in a complete circle about twenty feet across with no beginning or end, and no apparent input or output of water. The ground was uneven, but the water continued to follow the path of the ring, flowing uphill just as easily as it flowed downhill.

“I don’t know if it’s dangerous, but I wouldn’t recommend touching it,” I said, carefully stepping over the water and making sure not to disturb its course. Butters and I walked to the center of the ring.

“This place is crazy,” he said. “It’s like a wacky lethal funhouse dimension. I mean, I can definitely see why you wouldn’t want to spend more time here. It doesn’t seem like the most human-friendly place.”

“It’s not the most _life_ -friendly place,” I corrected him. “The Nevernever will happily kill you dead regardless of what you are. But it’s never boring.”

I lowered the shield and opened the final portal of our journey. On the other side lay the dimly lit outline of Carbonado, Montana, framed from behind by looming, forested mountains.

“Here we are,” I said. “Ready?”

“I’d better be,” he replied, and walked past me back into the human world. I tried not to think about the mortality rate for Knights on their first missions as I followed him out, collapsing the doorway behind us. As the portal closed, a blast of bitterly frigid air swept out of it. Carried on it, I caught the faint sound of pipes playing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, everybody! Life got crazy. Ugh, med school secondaries. This chapter is a little shorter, but I should be able to start writing again at a reasonable pace now that I'm over the rush of application season. Thanks for the patience!


	4. Chapter 4

We walked into town just after dawn, but we’d already missed the morning rush of cars on their way to work. Carbonado was primarily a logging community, its active sawmill smokestack clearly visible in the growing light of day.

As we reached the main street, I asked, “Alright, Butters. Where to?”

He looked up at me, surprised.

“This is your job as much as mine,” I said. “What do you think?”

“I know what you’re doing,” he said. “Rescue mission with training wheels. So, what, you’ll step in if I start making the wrong choices?”

I shrugged. “It’s kind of hard to know what the right choice looks like when you’re more or less blindly digging for info on a new case. And as you were so eager to point out, this isn’t your first rodeo.”

He grimaced and shifted his injured shoulder uncomfortably. “Yeah. But it kinda is.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It kinda is.

He thought for a moment, then pointed a short way up the street. “We might have some help by the city hall. I don’t want to say anything definitive until we look. It might not be anything.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Why would we have help there?”

Butters shrugged with one shoulder, not looking at me. “I made a call.”

“ _You_ made a call?”

“Yes, Harry, I made a call,” he said, mildly irritated. “You’re not the only one who knows people.”

“You know people in Carbonado City Hall?” I asked. The modest building in question sat nestled between a little restaurant and a supplies store at the end of Main Street, on the edge of the town. Instead of going in, though, Butters started walking down the row of cars parked out front.

“No, I- look. It might not be anything.”

“But it could be bureaucratic warrior backup,” I mused, watching him look the cars over for something unknown. “They could help us fill out our taxes, or apply for a loan.”

Butters gave me a half-hearted glare. “You’re being an asshole, Harry. And confusing CPAs and bankers, neither of whom will be helping us today unless things go in a really weird direction. I already told you-” He stopped short, peering in the side widow of a beat-up sedan. “Ha! Gotcha!”

“Got what?” I asked, looking over his shoulder. The car appeared totally unremarkable.

“Our ride,” he said. “Hang on a sec-” He bent down, feeling underneath the front carriage until he located what was apparently a hidden key. He withdrew it with a flourish, and said smugly, “I know people, too.”

“Well, color me impressed,” I said.

“Just wait,” he said, walking around to unlock the trunk. “Let's see what we've got to work with.”

He popped the trunk, lifting it to reveal what looked like the closet contents of a neat-freak obsessed with surviving the apocalypse. There was a pallet of bottled water and non-perishable food, an expertly packed first aid kit, a sealed bag of loose fitting clothing, thermal blankets, and much more. At the back of the trunk was a metal lockbox which I suspected held some kind of weaponry. A small envelope was taped to the bottom of the trunk hatch. Butters pulled it free and opened it, revealing what looked like a few hundred dollars.

“Butters,” I said, genuinely impressed, “what the hell is this?”

“What does it look like? It’s disaster response on wheels.”

The pieces clicked together. “The Paranet. It’s an evacuation vehicle. Or a rescue vehicle. Or whatever else it needs to be; who even stocked this thing? Because they did not skimp.”

“Mmhm,” he said, putting the money-filled envelope back, closing the trunk, and going to check out the front of the car. “It was my idea. At least, I had the initial idea, but Gary fleshed out the necessities- you remember Paranet Gary, with the weird boat theory a few years ago? And Elaine- she’s the boss out on the West Coast- she handled the execution on her end.”

I took a moment to process the fact that Butters was on a first name basis with Elaine Mallory, my old girlfriend, and apparently wasn’t sure if I knew who she was.

He kept talking as he rummaged through the glovebox. “We’ve got a network of available cars stashed around the country, with drivers to take them where they’re needed. I gave the ‘Net a call before we left, but I wasn’t sure if they would be able to get us anything. Probably sent someone out of Billings, but I don’t know. We try to compartmentalize membership pretty heavily, what with the mass kidnappings and all.” He pulled a map out of the glovebox and unfolded it. A number of locations on it were marked with colored dots, probably a key to safe locations for food and lodging, or something of the sort.

“There’s a network of these across the entire country?” I asked. “How did the Paranet afford that?”

“Dues, mostly,” Butters said. “They’re not mandatory or anything, but practically everyone contributes whatever they can. If not money, then supplies or time. Can I see those addresses?” I handed him the list from inside my duster, and he continued more soberly, “After all, everyone knows it could easily be them that needs the rescuing. The Paranet saved a lot of people when you- when everything went bad. The network still doesn’t cover as much area as we’d like, and we lose contact with some cities on a regular basis. Sometimes they’re just lying low while something moves through, but other times-” He grimaced. “We had more than twenty Paranet members in Charlotte, when things were at their worst. One day they checked in, everything normal. Whatever happened, it happened overnight. Never heard from any of them again. Stuff like the evac cars, they gave us more mobility. A little extra time to find a cavalry to call.” He laughed harshly. “Not that we could get the Wardens interested in helping out all that often.”

My gut clenched uncomfortably. I had known he’d started working with the Paranet after my disappearance, but for some reason I’d always imagined him as the support guy, running numbers and handling logistics. I hadn’t pictured him getting involved with the day-to-day realities of the people who needed help, who were dying.

I’d never heard him sound so bitter.

The power vacuum which attracted the Fomor existed because of my actions. I’d caused a global catastrophe, then tapped out and left the mess for people like Butters to try to deal with.

“You’re the cavalry now,” I said. “How does it feel?”

He shrugged. “Terrifying? I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“That’s the big secret,” I said. “None of us do.”

“I guess. Anyway. You want to drive?” he asked, dangling the keys.

I lifted my hands in denial, and stepped past him into the passenger seat. “You’re the boss.”

“Yeah, right,” he said. He handed me the map, which he’d marked with the locations of the stolen children’s homes. “I’m sure that attitude will hold for about two seconds after something starts to go down.”

 

Our first stop was the home of the first kid to be taken- Trevor Samson. Butters parked the car up the street from the house as we decided on our next move. Our chances for getting a look at any of the crime scenes in a legal capacity weren’t good. It wasn’t like we had any official jurisdiction, and we hadn’t been invited to help by anyone here. My old SI connections didn’t mean anything outside of Chicago, and my Illinois PI license didn’t even apply in Montana. The recent recovery of the Trevor’s body afforded us something akin to luck, however- if it could be called that, given the circumstances. His funeral was scheduled for this morning.

There were a few cars outside the house, including one that looked like some kind of catering service. Probably set-up for a wake after the service.

“Harry!” Butters said as I got out of the car. “There’s still people in the house, and I don’t think they’ll let you snoop around the kid’s room while the rest of the family is at his funeral!”

I rolled my eyes. “Gee, you think? We’re not going into the house.”

Dawn may have arrived but it was still spring in Montana, and daylight arrived slowly and begrudgingly through the overcast sky. The naturally dim light was the only reason I would have ever tried to cast a veil outside during what was technically daytime.

My vision dimmed as the veil went into place. The illusion would make it harder for others to see me, but affecting the path of light is a two-way street; it also made it harder for me to see the world around me.

“Stay close,” I told Butters, “and don’t make any noise. I can lower the chances that we’re seen, but I’m not doing anything to muffle sound.” We crossed the street and approached the side gate which led towards the backyard. As I opened it, I muttered, “Hope they don’t have a dog.”

“ _Harry_ ,” Butters hissed.

“Shhh.”

The house had a set of large bay windows facing the backyard, though their curtains had been drawn. I could see the outlines of people moving behind them.

The backyard itself was edged with thickly canopied trees, shading it to an almost gloomy degree. A large burr oak grew in the center, tire swing hanging from its branches.

“What are we looking for?” Butters asked quietly.

“Clues,” I said.

“And what do those look like?”

“They’re sort of like porn,” I said.

Butters gave me a slow and careful look, and cautiously said, “You know it when you see it?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh thank God.”

Nothing seemed out of place in the backyard- not that I’d really expected it to. I faced the house, closed my eyes, and opened my Sight. The first impression to hit me was the most recent. Fear and grief dripped off the house so strongly as to almost completely drown out anything else. I sighed. Great. I’d hoped to catch a glimpse of something useful, some trace of the abduction, but I hadn’t accounted for the reactions of the parents since their son’s disappearance clouding everything over.

“Uh, so,” Butters whispered from behind me. “Did you mean to drop the veil? Because I don’t think we’re veiled anymore.”

Damn it.

Veils have never been my strong suit (read: I suck at them, big time), and I didn’t have the concentration to veil us both while trying to sift through my Sight.

“Then hide,” I whispered, still looking at the house. Butters made a sound somewhere between exasperation and panic, and heard him run behind the old oak. This would need to be quick; the last thing we needed was to be arrested for trespassing, especially at the home of an abducted and murdered child.

Peeling away the pervading sense of guilt and depression from the house was difficult, but the family had existed as a whole much longer than it had existed as a fragmented mess. Under the crush of emotions left in the wake of Trevor’s disappearance was... frustration. They hadn’t been a perfect, idyllic family. The Sight wouldn’t give specifics, but the home had seen more than its share of conflicts. However, there was still no sign of anything truly amiss, nothing dark and staining. No traces of violence or death, and no traces of overt magic.

I looked away from the house and caught a flash of color at the base of the tree. I knelt down, closing my Sight and redrawing the veil around myself and Butters. A little red racecar had fallen in the long grass around the tree’s trunk, forgotten or left out to play with another day. Next to it was a crushed mess of twigs and leaves with bits of colored thread, the remains of some previous plaything.

Trevor had been an only child. I wondered how much time would pass before his parents would stop finding his toys, discarded here and there as his attentions sprang from one thing to the next. I wondered if they would leave the tire swing up, or have the whole tree cut down, or get a divorce and move to a different state. I wondered what I would do.

_Burn everything._

That wouldn’t be a very helpful plan, long-term.

_Die?_

Okay, possibly even less helpful.

“Harry?” Butters looked worried.

_Just don’t think about it. It’s not her. This isn’t about her. She’s fine. She isn’t-_

I stood up.

“Let’s get moving."

 

We drove by the houses of the second and third victims, but didn’t even bother getting out of the car. The discovery of Trevor’s body had only increased the flurry of law enforcement activity around the homes of the remaining missing kids, and their streets were practically lined with the town’s police. If Molly- or whoever- had seen fit to send Butters and I out here, then I doubted the police had a solid lead. They were probably going half-mad with frustration, which was all the more reason not to get mixed up with them. They’d jump at the opportunity to feel like they were doing something useful by interrogating someone, even if that “someone” had the rock solid alibi of being a few hundred miles away in Chicago at the time of the disappearances.

The last house, site of the most recent abduction, was just down the street from a small park and playground. Butters pulled the car into its gravel parking lot and killed the engine. There were multiple police cars parked along the street, as well as a handful of cars in the Tomos’ driveway.

Butters blew out his breath in frustration. “How are we supposed to get anything done if we’re not able to get closer than four hundred feet from the crime scenes? This is so much easier when you’re working with the police.”

“Or when nobody lives at the crime scene.” He gave me a questioning look, and I elaborated, “Break in at night.”

“You break into murder scenes?” Butters said, sounding slightly scandalized. “Actually, no, strike that. I don’t know why that would surprise me. That shouldn’t surprise me at all. I have personally broken into an electronics store and a museum with you. You disappear for a year and the first time I see you, you’re breaking into my apartment at night to steal my things.”

I winced. It hadn’t been one of my finer moments.

“Did I ever apologize for that?" I asked. "Because I feel like I apologized for that." Pause. “Sorry. For breaking into your house. And trying to take Bob.” I cleared my throat. “And almost knocking out you and Andi.”

“And what?!” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “It was- yeah. I thought about it. I didn’t! But it seemed like a good idea. At the time.”

We sat together in uncomfortable silence for a minute.

_Well, yes, Harry. You say things like 'I thought it was a good idea to attack you,' and then wonder why he keeps giving you looks when he thinks you won’t see._

I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for some further apology or explanation of my actions. Probably. Armed robbery and assault aren’t exactly within the bounds of a healthy friendship. I gestured vaguely at my head. “I was kind of-”

“Yeah,” he cut me off. “Yeah, I remember. You looked... scary, honestly. Little bit unhinged. Little bit skeleton-y.”

“Oh yeah, I was all of those things. Hopefully, less so now.”

“Definitely less so now.”

“Low bar?”

“Very low bar.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Butters said.

“Eh.” I waggled my hand in a ‘so-so’ motion. “Little bit my fault.”

We fell quiet again.

“So,” I said. “The case.”

“Right,” Butters said. Maybe he sounded relieved, or maybe that was just me, projecting.

Whatever.

“If we went and knocked on the door, we’d be kicked to the curb before you could say, ‘can I interest you in a copy of the Watchtower’. By now, it’s too bright outside for a veil, even if there were less activity around the house. So, what can we do here?”

After a pause, Butters asked, “Was that a rhetorical question, or are you actually asking me?”

“All you,” I said.

Butters frowned, thinking. “Well... I assumed that you’re mostly asking what you can do here, since I can’t actually Jedi mind trick my way into the house.”

“Just tell me what you see, Butters.”

“Okay, okay.” He looked at the house, then up and down the street, eyes tracking over every house on the block. Finally, he sighed. “I don’t know, Harry, everything looks fine to me.”

“Go on,” I prompted.

“Well, nobody is running down the street screaming, ‘I did it! It was me!’”

I snorted.

“But really, I don’t see anything out of place. There’s a few police cars parked by the house, and another two parked on either end of the street. It looks like maybe some friends or neighbors are in the house with the family, judging by the number of cars in the driveway? Other than that, nothing looks strange. It looks like a normal street on a normal day.” He frowned. “Which is strange. Everything looks fine. But it shouldn’t, should it?”

I motioned for him to keep going but he was already speaking again, slowly picking up speed.

“There’s no flashing lights, no police cordon, nobody acting like anything is going on. There’s a guy walking his dog over there, and he hasn’t looked over at the Tomos' house once. Not once! _Everybody_ rubbernecks to look at a crime scene, it’s just human nature! There’s... there’s no news crews. Anywhere. We didn’t see any, at any of the houses. This is the fourth child to be abducted from a small town in a month, and I haven’t read a single story about it. You had some newspaper clippings, but they were from this town's paper. I haven’t seen it on TV, I haven’t seen it in big newspapers or online. That’s weird, right? Like, how does that happen?”

He was getting excited now, talking fast and using his hands. “And that’s another thing! There have been four abductions. Of children! One kidnapping is territory for the FBI! Four of them in as many weeks? They should be crawling all over this place, but all we’ve seen is local law enforcement! Not even state troopers, just town police! Even if the local police didn’t contact anybody, why wouldn’t the families have contacted the news, or the FBI, or somebody? What the hell is going on here?”

“That pretty much sums up my thinking, yeah,” I said.

Butters narrowed his eyes. “Exactly when did you first notice this?”

“Ehhh, at the first house.”

Butters slumped back in his seat. “Aw man, I felt really cool there for a second.”

“There, there,” I said, patting his shoulder condescendingly. “I thought you were very cool.”

Butters turned to glared at me. “I will hurt you. I know when your next date night with Karrin is. I will give Maggie caffeinated sodas and candy. She will be up all night. Your house is not that big. Do not test me.”

“Hey now,” I said, lifting my hand slowly off of his shoulder. “Let’s not do anything anybody’s going to regret.”

He jabbed a finger at me. “You watch yourself, bud.”

I felt a sneaking suspicion. “Should I find it weird that you know my date schedule? Because I do, just a little.”

“Deal with it,” he said mercilessly. “That’s friendship. Besides, we all decided it was important to try and handle any problems that came up on those nights without calling you. Any time you take the field after having a date interrupted, property damage goes through the roof.”

I blinked. “Wait. What?”

“Did you honestly think things just didn’t go wrong when you have Murph over?” He snorted. “Come on. We all know your luck ain’t that good. You both deserve the down time.”

I blinked again. “Uh. Thanks?”

“Murph saw what we were doing, and in fact thanked us after she caught on. But you didn’t even notice. Heh.” Butters shook his head. “Anyway, the case. Go on.”

“No, sorry, I’m still hung up on how you and apparently everyone else I know has been conspiring to-”

Butters raised a finger and looked me in the eye for a split second, which effectively shut me up. “Harry. Do your Sherlock schtick and tell me how you’re more observant than I am. We don’t have all day.”

“Okay, but when you say it like that, it sounds-”

“Dude.”

I threw up my hands. “Fine, fine. No respect. I thought it was weird that there was nobody at the Samson’s, no news trucks or anything, but I figured that maybe the media was just giving the family space out of respect for their loss. In a perfect world, it could happen. The absence of outsiders at the second and third houses was increasingly suspicious, but there was always a chance that everybody had come here, to be at the site of the most recent abduction. Alana was only taken yesterday, which in a normal case would mean she has the highest-”

A sharp rap on the trunk of the car interrupted me.

We both turned in our seats to look out the rear windshield. A cop stood behind the car, arms crossed. Apparently our presence in the park had not gone unnoticed. 

“Ah. Well, that’s inconvenient,” I said.

“So, had you not gotten to the observation lesson about keeping a watchful eye out behind yourself?” Butters asked as he rolled down his window.

“Shut up.” Honestly, it  _was_ embarrassing to be snuck up on by a normal cop on foot.

I opened the glovebox to fish out the vehicle registration as the officer walked up, presumably to ask for license, insurance, and registration, and also what the hell were we doing.

I did not find the vehicle registration in the glovebox. I did, however, find a gun.

“Butters,” I said, slowly and quietly. “The Paranet did obtain this evac car legally, did it not?”

“Uh,” he said. “I assume so?”

“You _assume?!_ ”

This wasn’t great.

“Out of the car, Butters,” I said. “And be non-threatening.”

“My middle name,” he said to me as he opened the door and got out. “Good morning, sir!” he said, raising his voice to address the approaching officer, whose nametag read ‘Firecrow.’ I got out after him and leaned on the hood of the parked car.

The officer looked ridiculously young. He held himself with confidence, though, with sharp eyes and high cheekbones framed by dark, straight hair. He either took meticulous care with his uniform or it was nearly brand new. I was pretty sure it was the second one. He gave Butters a fixed, professional smile, which slid off his face when he looked over at me.

“Can I help you, officer?” Butters asked.

“I hope so. Can I ask what you’re doing here today?”

“Enjoying a beautiful day in the park,” I interjected before Butters could say anything.

The officer raised a single eyebrow. “Enjoying it from inside your car. Facing away from the park.”

“It’s the anticipation, I just love it,” I said. “But now, ah, look how wonderful it all is. Even better than I had been imagining.”

As long as I could keep his attention on me and not on the vehicle, then he wouldn’t have grounds to arrest us. Legally, that is. He could still make things difficult if he wanted to, and me nettling him wasn’t likely to make him into a friend. Still, I needed him to focus on me. If he starting looking too closely at the car then we could run into serious trouble. I had no idea where its papers were- if they even existed- and was fairly sure there were multiple firearms in the trunk lockbox, with similarly unclear legal status.

Firecrow maintained an even look, blandly unimpressed, then looked over at Butters. “And what are you doing here today?”

“Currently? I’m wishing I had less antagonistic friends,” Butters said.

The officer smiled faintly and was only partially successful at hiding it. At least he didn’t seem to dislike Butters. “You are aware, of course, that you have been watching a crime scene since you arrived?”

I feigned surprise. “Is that so! We were aware of no such thing. What with, you know, the complete lack of police cordoning.”

A strange look flitted across his face and was gone, too quickly to be identified.

“Well, that is a funny thing,” I said, stretching my arms above my head, “but I think it’s time to start my walk in the park. Have a good day.”

“Hold on a second, sir,” Firecrow said, voice hard. “I’m not done.”

“But I think I am,” I said. “Unless you have some reason to detain us? This is a public park, yes? And it hasn’t been blocked off?”

“Sir, I need you to walk back to the-”

I took a stab in the dark. “Hey officer, where’s the FBI?”

He stopped talking mid-sentence, mouth still open, then said, “-car. Please keep your hands visible.”

The gap had only lasted a second, but it had been utterly out of step with his expression and the flow of his words. It was as if something had momentarily paused him, and then had resumed his motion without him realizing he had ever been stopped.

“What was that?” asked Butters, stepping forward.

Firecrow turned back to him. “Sir, please stay-”

I walked around the car towards him, interrupting again. “Officer. Where is the FBI.”

He froze again, but this time he stopped talking, brows furrowed in confusion. “What- stop. Stop moving.”

Damn it.

“Officer Firecrow, do you know what the FBI is?” I asked.

“I... yes, of course, I-” His voice was stuttering and uncertain.

“Tell me why they aren’t here,” I asked softly.

“I- I don’t- you-” His right hand moved fitfully, like it was trying to grab something but was attached to a body that didn’t share its goal. His previously sharp eyes glazed over.

“Well, I guess that explains why we haven’t heard anything on the news,” I said. “Sorry, buddy. It’s okay, you don’t have to answer.”

Butters got up slowly, looking at the poor guy whose mind had just discovered it wasn’t the one calling all the shots.

“Is he okay?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Mind control. Someone made it seem completely natural to him that nobody outside of this town needed to be involved in these disappearances.”

“They would’ve had to have whammied the entire population for that to work,” Butters said. “Is that as hard to do as I think it is?”

“Even harder. I have no idea how someone could pull mind magic this strong over a couple thousand people and keep it in place for this long.”

Suddenly, there was a loud bang as the front door to the Tomos house was thrown open with enough force to crash into the side of the house and start to swing closed again. It didn’t have the chance, though, as a young woman charged out through it, her face a red and blotchy mess. She was followed out by a man and a woman in uniform, and a tall woman in a dark grey business suit.

The crying woman made a beeline down the street towards us, shouting, “Did they do this? Did they?! Tell me!”

Butters and I both looked at policeman beside us, who was still wordlessly staring ahead, clenching and unclenching his right hand.

“What do we do?!” Butters hissed. “He’s just- oh my God, we are going to get arrested. We are going to jail.”

I looked from him to the mesmerized officer, to the enraged mother charging towards us and the hapless police trying to get her to stop. 

Well, shit.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whee! This chapter went much faster than the last. As always, comments and kudos and greatly appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> (Also, you can find me at tumblr [here](http://the-prettiest-octopus.tumblr.com) , if you are so inclined.)


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